LOOPED IN with Carl Warkentin
The podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models - this is the place where we dive deep into the future of business, sustainability, and circular economy. After a decade of entrepreneurial experience as a founder and investor, Carl had countless, meaningful behind-the-scenes conversations about how we can reshape industries, close the loop, and create real impact. And now, we want to bring these conversations to you.
On Looped In, Carl sits down with entrepreneurs, business owners, venture capitalists, and policymakers who are at the forefront of change. Together, we’ll explore innovative business models, breakthrough technologies, and the regulations shaping the circular economy.
LOOPED IN with Carl Warkentin
Mapping the Circular Fashion Transformation with Tiina Nyman
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Secondhand is everywhere, but the mechanics behind circular fashion are messier and more interesting than most headlines admit. We sit down with Tina Newman, a Finland-based circular fashion journalist and consultant behind Circular Fashion News, to get a grounded view of what is actually changing in textiles right now and what still feels stuck.
We talk through the circular business models reshaping the market: why fashion resale is growing fastest, what makes rental harder to justify for many brands, and how repair is gaining momentum while often being treated as a customer service add-on. Tina shares how she builds a highly focused audience across LinkedIn and Substack, how she curates weekly updates, and why condensing news into quarterly-style reporting can reveal the real direction of sustainable fashion.
Then we zoom out to textile recycling and the surge of attention on chemical recycling, including what “commercial scale” really means and why barriers like cost, infrastructure, and demand still slow adoption. We also unpack the unglamorous operational bottlenecks that limit resale profitability, from single-item listing work to the need for better processes and automation. Along the way, we land on a clear definition of textile circularity that starts with designing and producing less, making garments durable and repairable, and only then relying on recycling for what cannot stay in use.
If you care about circular fashion, textile recycling, fashion resale, and the future of sustainable textiles, this conversation is a practical roadmap. Subscribe for more, share this with someone building in the space, and leave a review with your biggest question about making circularity scale.
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Welcome And Meet Tina Newman
SPEAKER_00Welcome everybody for another episode of Looped In with Carl Workington. Today I'm joined by a very special guest from Finland, Tina Newman. Did I pronounce it correctly?
SPEAKER_02Yes, you actually did.
SPEAKER_00Tina, following your work for quite a while now on LinkedIn, you're you're kind of a LinkedIn influencer with your circular fashion journalism. And because you're so much focusing on circularity and fashion and textiles, obviously there's a lot that aligns with my work. Can you please share how you went into that system and what excites you about it?
From Resale Startup To Circular News
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Um, and thank you so much. Love to hear uh that you've been following my LinkedIn journey. So I'm a circle of fashion journalist and consultant, and I would also say maybe content creator in the space. So I got into circle of fashion actually through my own startup. So a few years ago, I started a startup in fashion resale space. And I would say that I was really interested in the textile and fashion space before that, but that kind of like got me into the circularity of the space more in-depth. And after that, that was a brief test in the fashion resale market. With my co-founder, we didn't in the end really believe in our uh business model, so we decided to close down the business and then I stayed in the space helping other early stage startups, and then ended up founding also on a side uh this publication called Circular Fashion News, where I track the circularity transformation happening in fashion textiles. So that has also gotten me into the LinkedIn world. I'm actually quite new to that, but I think it's a great channel to find people in the space and get those discussions going with brands and with other companies on what should happen and what is happening in the space.
SPEAKER_00You have quite the subsect channel. You do post a lot on LinkedIn, which looks very professional. You say you are a fashion journalist. Are you like a journalist by education, or is it something you developed after your entrepreneurial experience? And what is your most important communications channel?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I am not a journalist by education. So I've started business, actually, um, supply chain management and information service management. And then I've always worked in marketing and communications, but journalism has always interested me. And so I started doing it on my own through my own publication and through Substack. I started writing, and then nowadays I write my own Substack, and then I also write pieces for other publications about the space. So I'm very much focused on just the textile and fashion circularity space and write about that.
SPEAKER_00Focus is, I think, one of the most important things, especially in the industry that we
Making Journalism Work With Consulting
SPEAKER_00are in. How is your personal business model looking like? Are you able to live from your journalism projects, or is that basically a lead generation tool for your consulting services?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I would love to live from it, but that's not the reality at the moment. It does bring a nice extra bonus. So I have true My Substack, I have a paid subscriber tier that brings a bit of income and then true pieces to other publications. I do get writing money from writing, but I'm I'm pretty sure that all journalists, freelance journalists, know in the space that it's not something that is very well paid usually. So I do work as a consultant on the side. So, like I mentioned, I help uh early stage startups in the space of circular fashion with their marketing, communications, also a little bit of market research and business development. So I actually have my background in the like in very early stage startups throughout my career. So that's why I focused on working with really early stage teams and startups. So those teams usually need support in many different functions.
SPEAKER_00And I'm sure they benefit from your tremendous network. I just checked on LinkedIn. We have almost 500 mutual connections, which is pretty unique, and she'll said that's a lot.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So but I think also like like you were also asking about um kind of like having this, like getting leads to consulting business, and I think LinkedIn is like my main channel for that. So also just kind of like getting myself out there and getting visibility among potential uh consultant clients has been really, really important for me.
Copenhagen Global Fashion Summit Notes
SPEAKER_00Right. And you just have been recently to Copenhagen, um, and I think saw two people that I introduced you to uh that I'm also working with. Uh one of them is Trina from Rodinia Generation, where I'm chairman of. And tell me how was that trip? I've never been uh to the global fashion agenda, like shame on me, one has to say. Everybody seems to be going. How were your impressions?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was my first time physically at the event. So last year I was joining just digitally. So I really enjoyed the event, um, mainly because it is such a like focused on sustainable fashion. So everyone at the conference are really relevant for me. So a lot of good conversations around the industry from the program of itself of Global Fashion Summit. I would say that like the workshop section is the best of that event. So that's actually when you get like you have a topic, you have maybe a little panel discussion, and then you actually get people in in groups that can then discuss that how do they see see the industry and the problems in their countries and in their business, and you get kind of like even more deeper insights um into what people are struggling with and insights from the industry. I think um overall the other program is always like very well curated as well. But often when it is like a big stage program, of course, it can become like quite repetitive. So you have those same topics that are always discussed. But overall, I I really like the event. I think it's it's very well organized and very well created.
How She Built 14,000 Readers
SPEAKER_00You have already 14,000 people in your audience, right? That you reach every week throughout your different channels. How long did it take you to build this audience and what kind of people are most reaching out to you? Is that the fashion brands who want to learn more or know more or be visible? Or is it the startups, or investors reaching out to you, or people like organizations, Alan McArthur and others? Who do you reach most and who's actually reaching out to you after?
SPEAKER_01Hmm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so um, so that's like my combined audience of LinkedIn and Substack. And I would say that when thinking about my Substack audience, which is uh a bit over 4,000 people at the moment, like because they're I of course see kind of like based on emails that who is reading, reading the reading the newsletter that I send out. I would say that it's like little over half of them are clearly from the industry based on like emails. So fashion brands, a lot of startups working in the space, some of these organizations, NGOs, also some like brands that are maybe doing fashion and textiles, and a bit, I would say, outside of the fashion industry, so more on the on the textile space. Then I do know also from uh from conversations that I've had with my audience and and from the feedback that there's also a lot of people who are like really interested in the space, so maybe like soon to be founders or people who would want to work in the industry. So that's kind of like the audience that I have. And on LinkedIn, it's even more like business focused because also I think it's it just comes from the content that I do, that it is very, very like very data-driven and very in the business context. So I think it draws the audience from the business side. So again, like fashion brands, startups, solution providers in the space. And then when I'm thinking about like who reaches out to me, of course, I get a lot of contacts from either from fashion brands or startups in the space who have some news that they want to share. Um, because that's what I do also through my newsletter. So I want to highlight these developments that are happening in the industry. So that has also become like a really good channel for me that I actually get the announcements inbound for myself and I don't need to like.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's great because I can imagine looking for the right content. And you do it weekly, I believe. At least on LinkedIn, I see something weekly. You need to one one imagines you need a lot of time researching everything, what's happening, and and writing it together. Um, how how much time does it take you?
SPEAKER_02Um, it it does change from week to week, but I think it is like, for example, like my LinkedIn algorithm is just circular fashion. So whenever I open a LinkedIn, it's only like announcements from like brands and startups in the space that what's happening or other reports or studies. So I think a lot of it comes quite organically that I just come across them through my through my other work and just being in the space, but then kind of like gathering all of it together, writing the newsletter, adding my comments that how do I see these like developments during this week? It usually takes like my Sunday. Uh so that's my Sunday activity of of the week.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. You have 4,000 subsex subscribers, which is great, especially for such a niche that we are in in textile industry, fashion, and circularity. How long did it take you to build that audience?
SPEAKER_02It's now been a bit over a year. Um last year, March uh or start of April, I think. So yeah. Yeah, it's been nice to see the audience grow.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Congratulations. I'm happy for that, and I hope this podcast brings the attention of even more people to your newsletters and to your news in general and to your work as a consultant.
The Circular Business Models Taking Off
SPEAKER_00Let's go a bit deeper into the topic itself. You see obviously a lot, and you you talk a lot about what's happening in the industry. What over the last year would you say are the main drivers, the main topics that people are working on focusing on?
SPEAKER_02Hmm. In the context of like fashion circularity.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, I think uh when thinking about the space in general, so I usually divide it into kind of like these new business models that are circular. So resale, rental, scaling, repair services. So out of those kind of like new ways of operating and maybe replacing new production, resale is definitely what is growing the fastest. So not only the big players in the field like Vinted or eBay doing these crazy expansions and growing really rapidly, but also brands, just like the amount of brands is continuously growing that who are launching resale or looking to launch it. So I would say that from brand perspective, it's not anymore a question that do brands see resale being something that they should look into, but it's more like how can we do it? And I think that is still the biggest barrier for fashion brands that they're not sure that how they can do it profitably or how can they do it that suits their audience and their brand. Then when thinking about, for example, rental repair, rental is much more smaller field. It's mostly run through peer-to-peer platforms at the moment, or like the big managed platforms like Rent the Runway. But from brand perspective, rental is a bit of a question mark for many brands. So many brands have have told me that they are kind of like they don't really know the environmental impact. And if they don't know that what is the impact in their emission savings, and there is not really like a profitable business case, then there's no point in going into rental. And I think in that, like rental as a model is just a bit more trickier for many fashion brands. And then repair, that's also growing. There's a lot more interest, also from consumer side, towards repairing clothes, and it's gaining a lot more momentum. From from the perspective of fashion brands, many of them are looking at repair more as this like an add-on to the customer service. So that they they're looking at like how to make their customers more loyal to the brand or how can they better purchase carry out customer service. So usually like repair is not really replacing new production in a similar way as resell could be, but it's more like an add-on to customer service. So I think those kind of like from the new type of business models are what are like popping out at the
Chemical Recycling Promise And Reality
SPEAKER_02moment. Then another big thing that is being discussed, and also in the news, I think, all the time, is the scaling of textile recycling and especially chemical textile recycling. So chemical textile recycling is basically a technology where you can get polyester recycled into virgin quality polyester. And chemical recycling is at the moment stepping into the next phase. So actually reaching commercial scale. And I think that is kind of like what is all the time being discussed, and it's all the time in the news, and brands show a lot of interest towards that. But regarding recycling, I think it is still there's a lot of barriers to it. The cost is still really high. There would need to be a lot more demand from brands, there would be there, we would need regulations like EPR, extended producer responsibility to support building the infrastructure. So even though recycling is talked about a lot more, it is reaching commercial scale. There is still quite a big of a gap to actually get to the point that we could in scale use recycled content in textiles.
SPEAKER_00You're right. Everybody seems to be talking about recycling. And a lot of people think of recycling when talking circularity. Luckily, also to what you mentioned, there is so much more to it than just recycling parts. Let us go into a bit this this prolonging of the life cycle of a product, which is resale, rental, and
The Real Bottlenecks In Resale
SPEAKER_00repair. I I also see that there's a lot of focus on it, especially resale. Rental and repair still are, I think, more struggling in getting a really good business model in. Um I created a community called Circle Zero, and one of our first members is uh the founder of Coblar in the US, which I'm sure you know she does fashion care and repair. So there are a lot of tools and and software out there now that makes fashion repair more interesting again as a business model. You seem to focus a lot on resale as well, through the business that you build before you started your consulting work, but also with your resale report. Can you share a little bit about the report that you posted and and all the learnings from the resale?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. So actually, with with overall with Circular Fashion News, I am currently like wanting to move more into the direction of launching these like bigger reports about the industry. So kind of like gathering all of the news that I publish into quarterly reports to see what's happening in the space. And this fashion resale report was one of the first ones that I published looking at that what's happening in fashion resale currently. And through that report, it was quite evident that exactly like the amount of brands launching their resale, either pilots or bigger programs, is growing all the time. And that I kind of like see it in a way that that brand interest is driven by the growing market itself. So the market is growing, and that market growth is driven by first the big players in the field who have been kind of like pouring money to the industry for a while now, and then the shifting consumer habits in resale and how secondhand has become culturally really okay to buy, and more consumers are all the time buying secondhand. So, overall, all of that combined just drives the market all the time forward and bigger.
SPEAKER_00Right. I remember before I moved to the States last year, I did a big resale project together with a German resale company and Cortex and a company that was back then called Reverse Supply. They are now trove Europe. They got acquired, and we identified nine problems why resale is not yet scaling and as profitable as it could be and should be. Partially it is, you know, because making consumers more aware of buying secondhand especially the younger generations do that already. But also obviously selling secondhand, like accessing feedstock seems to be a big a big uh thing. That's why Gore-Tex was very interested in in that project as well. Funnily enough, I just had this morning a call with a Dutch startup called Vinx V Y N X.
SPEAKER_02They do the robot, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so they tomorrow have a big so tomorrow is end of June. I think is it or no, first of July already. Um and uh so they have a big presentation tomorrow and start their seed round soon. I was really impressed by the mission of really decreasing the time that it takes to take in a secondhand product, take a picture, describe it, put it online, which normally takes 20 minutes, and that is the reason why resale a lot of times is not profitable, because when you have a hundred dollar jeans that you can resell for 20, 30, 40 dollars, then you do not have 20 minutes of labor time to describe that product because then the profitability is gone. So I think it it we need solutions like that. Is that also what you see most, or are there other trends or other reasons what resale as an industry still needs to overcome in order to be profitable and scalable?
SPEAKER_02I think that is one of the like the biggest barriers that we actually get like brands involved. So, especially for their involvement, it is important that that we get the process quicker and leaner. Like you like you described, like with resell and secondhand, the problem is that you have like single items. So when you sell that, it's gone. And all the time and effort you put in the product photos or the descriptions, that time is lost. And that's why it needs a lot of either technologies or then just kind of like getting that sort of processes in place um that are good enough for the resale products. And I think especially for brands, that is super important because for them it is like the game of that how much profit can be made from a single sale. Right now, for example, like the resale scroll is driven in a great deal by the peer-to-peer platforms, so where that isn't similarly a problem because it is like the individual users use their time. So it's not kind of like accounted in that in a similar way as it is with brands or with managed platforms like Tread Up and other
Building Reports And Mapping The Market
SPEAKER_02ones.
SPEAKER_00You wrote that report and you say you want to write more reports. What kind of traction did that bring for your work? Is it like something you really see gets a lot of value? I mean, I myself did purchase a lot of reports even in the past when I saw a deep dive in into something, and some of them are really expensive. So is that something writing reports, as you mentioned, per quarter? Is that something where you see a lot of value in this and new opportunities for yourself?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I would say the uh the fashion with the fashion resale report, that was quite a kind of like a test because that was also something that I offered free for my audience. So I was kind of like testing that how do people see it and what kind of feedback it gets. I got really good feedback from it. People or my audience really liked the fact that it was like all the information from the quarter was condensed. So you get kind of like a bigger picture of where the industry is and where it's heading. After that, I have, for example, published a mapping of the textile textile recycling space and kind of like mapped in a database. Report format that what is the stage of the like the different recycling innovations and which factories are being built, commercial factories at the moment. That was uh my first kind of like bigger paid report and database, and that gained a lot of traction and people found it really useful. And I think personally I want to focus more on that. My kind of like I would say like a dream vision would be to basically have all the data about the industry, all the players, all the brands, what they're doing, and map that in a visual format that we would get the understanding of where we are, and based on that and the historical data would be better at uh predicting where the industry is going and what's happening next.
SPEAKER_00If we think of the value chain, we talked about resale rental repair, you mentioned recycling. There's obviously so much more, like material science, production technology, microfactories, basically avoiding overproduction in the first place. When it comes to that, also all these different kinds of analytical tools with prediction tools that allow you to produce only what is really needed. So there are so many steps, uh sorting technology for the recycling industry. What do you see as super relevant? And I guess those areas would also be potential areas for a report.
SPEAKER_02Hmm. I think I think overall in the circle of fashion space, those things that we talked in the past, they're maybe a bit like easier to identify. So it's a bit easier to kind of like track and see that what's happening in resale. But like you said, for example, kind of like redesigning that how do we make products, how do we design them? Um, are we able to scale on-demand production? How do we actually um produce less? Those are in some ways even more important in terms of circularity. So not only focusing that how do we keep the things in circulation that we have now and how do we recycle things, but actually how do we, when we are designing new, how do we produce less and how do we design and produce things that are made for circularity? It is a bit, I would say, kind of like maybe like harder to track than what's happening in there because it's not, I would say, as clear, and things are maybe not so publicly available. So a lot of those things always also happen like inside brands that they maybe do like some improvements in their processes, uh, which might not be public or it might be a bit more like hidden in the in the brand. But I definitely think that there's also space to report more on that, especially on the side, kind of like how do we how do we design and produce for circularity? I think a lot of that discussion and kind of like the reports coming out of it is just focused on how do we design and produce for recyclability. But again, it is quite different that when we look at it, that how do we produce for resale, durability, um, rental, or products that are repairable. So it it is a bit different.
SPEAKER_00There are other organizations like Alamic Author and Fashion for Good, for example, that are also very vocal in writing reports and try to educate the industry. They, I assume, have a lot of capacity when it comes to research and getting all of these, you know, data. How do you manage to do all of that? Because your reports are also really interesting, very detailed. How do you manage to do all of that basically on your own?
SPEAKER_02That's a good question. I I do, of course, like for example, Fashion for Good and Ellen McCarty Foundation. Also, VRP is one that's really good. Uh, they produce a lot of really good reports. Of course, I, for example, use a lot of their materials. So I highlight their work and what they're doing in the space. But currently, like how I've built my stack at the moment is basically that I follow a certain RSS feeds, either from brands or uh startups, their own like newsrooms, and in addition to those, uh the big publications, so like business of fashion, um, vogue business, women wear daily, what are they reporting? Um, that what what kind of like press releases are they putting out? Um, and then I track those and and then narrow that down with my focus that I've just narrow things that are focused on circular fashion. So that's also like how I how I keep just kind of like updated that all the things that are happening, and then I pick on my own that what I think are most important. So at the moment, like saying that, it is of course that uh the publication is at the moment just me. So it is of course a lot focused also on on my perspective that what do I see being important in the space.
SPEAKER_00We basically dived immediately into everything and into circularity, and and you mentioned already a couple of business models enabling circularity. At Circular Republic, which is the nonprofit initiative I founded um a couple of years ago in Germany, as part of Europe's biggest entrepreneurship center. We there's a tool that we have for for startups for free to register, which is called uh EasyMatch by Circular Republic. And there we basically have a database of startups in various industries, but also in the textiles industry. And then we have different kinds of business models from enabling technologies to recycling and resource recovery and material science, etc. So basically what I'm saying is there's this whole value chain that one has to look into in order to understand circularity. We dived into the whole topic immediately.
Defining Textile Circularity And Mindset
SPEAKER_00How do you define textile circularity?
SPEAKER_02So, well, I think um it's quite a bit of the things what we have discussed here, how I define it. So, first of all, it is of course kind of like redesigning the process, how we produce at the moment. So basically in better production and cutting emissions from the production phase. So either it is by making products that are durable, that last in use, or making products with better materials, so maybe using like nextion materials, um bio-based solutions, then different kinds of production models. So, for example, on-demand production and just producing less in the first place through that. And then it is keeping the things that we have in use, so either to resell, rental, repair, or just in here, I also would say that it is also like a mindset mindset shift in in terms of like that we would just use things for longer that we have. And that is, of course, moving away from this trend cycles, needing all the time something new, also redefining that what a wearable garment looks like. So that is again getting repairs going mainstream, that it is okay to wear a clothing that is repaired or visibly mended. So just keeping things in circulation. And then it is textile recycling, so getting those materials that are not anymore usable recycled back into the system and reused as textiles in fashion or in textiles, or then also one option is downcycled into use in other fields.
SPEAKER_00So, next to a lot of work, I assume, in the B2B area with all the business models and educating the brands and allowing you know them to enter the market.
Talking To Consumers Without Guilt
SPEAKER_00I think it's relevant what you said also towards the end, is educating the customer, right? And and to market the whole industry in a way that it's cool and desirable to be more sustainable and buy secondhand. I think the newer generation, the younger generations are much better at this than some of the older generation. But to what extent do you focus your work obviously on B2B? I myself do not have Instagram, so I don't know, but like do you are you active also on Instagram or on other channels where you also try to, you know, get the broader audience of consumers interested in the fashion circularity?
SPEAKER_02Not at the moment that much, just due to limited resources.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02So I'm mainly active on on LinkedIn and Substack. Of course, on Substack as well, there are a lot of individuals and consumers. Um, so partly like there I reach some some of them. But Instagram, TikTok, I have done them in the past, but not currently, because it is just it's a lot of time to do content on all platforms. But I think that is also like super important. And I think there is a lot of lot of content creators and a lot of discussion overall online on Instagram and TikTok that are more like educating individuals on the impact and what they can do. Um, and also I think kind of like offering like people just solutions, how they can make better choices. Because I think for also for individuals, it is especially in the age where we have like people feeling so much climate anxiety and anxiety about like what they can do. I think it's also like really important to give very concrete things that individuals can do in their own life.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for highlighting that. Tina, thank you so much for your work. Really inspirational and inspiring for me to talk to you, and I'm sure it's very inspiring for many people to listen to you. I hope this will get you also some traction to the important work that you are
Closing Thanks And Keep Going
SPEAKER_00doing. So thank you for that. What would you like the audience to leave with? Is there anything you want to highlight of your work or of the circularity space that you see in? Like what what would you like us to leave with?
SPEAKER_02That's such a nice final question. I think I would just want to highlight for people, especially working in circularity and sustainability. I think it's overall a super hard field to work in. It is a place that is it's very hard to build business models in, especially startups working in sustainability and circularity. It's like building a startup is already like super difficult. Uh, when you're building in sustainability, it's it's even like double the work. So I just want to kind of like thank everyone in the field, doing great solutions, building, building brands that are doing things better. And yeah, I just want to say that keep up the good work.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much, Ina.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Carr.